Chapter 62 #2
“Bribery and espionage. Mulrooney managed to keep the cases away from the police because he didn’t want to frighten the killer.
We found a nurse who claimed she saw Kofie in Ms. Abercrombie’s room when he had no business being there.
We paid the nurse cold cash to dig some more.
And we hired a technician from another hospital, a spy really, to get a job at Fendamar.
He did and it worked beautifully. We were in no hurry, you see, because another poisoning would only bolster our case.
Pretty sick, really, looking back now, but at the time we were out of control and terribly excited.
Our spy befriended Kofie, which wasn’t difficult because he didn’t have many friends, and they became drinking buddies.
Then they did drugs. Kofie liked to talk about poisons and toxins.
We also hired an ex-DEA guy, called himself a consultant, to poke around in the black market.
Thallium is not that hard to find because it’s not illegal to possess.
It’s just against the law to produce it.
Our consultant found a broker in a shady lab in New Jersey and was able to track a shipment to Scranton, to a post office box rented to a guy with a fake name.
The trail ended there, but the shipment confirmed our suspicions.
Our spy finally got inside Kofie’s apartment, which had security alarms and cameras at both exterior doors, but nothing more inside.
The boys from the hospital, three or four of them, including our mole, had a late-night vodka and coke binge while watching porn videos.
Keep in mind these are the people we entrust with our health care.
The spy managed to stay somewhat lucid, and when the others passed out, he looked around the apartment.
Wasn’t much to see. Two small bedrooms, a den and a kitchen.
One bedroom door was locked solid but there were no visible alarms. A weekend trip to watch a Steelers game materialized, with our guy suddenly in possession of four tickets, plus he found cheap rooms. He said that Kofie admitted he’d never had so many friends.
When they were at the game, a security team entered his apartment, disabled the alarms, opened the locked bedroom door, and found two metal boxes, similar to toolboxes.
They removed them from the apartment and rushed them to a hotel room where their technicians were waiting.
Got one open and found enough coke and assorted pills to put him away for years.
In the other they found a little pharmacy, with several plastic bottles of poisons—arsenic, cyanide, strychnine, aconitine, and of course, thallium.
They were not labeled and the team was not equipped to identify them, so they took a small sample from each container and, later, ran them through a lab.
Everything was put back in order, and, as far as we could tell, Kofie never suspected the break-in. ”
Teel’s son made a diving catch at second and doubled-up the runner at first. It was a spectacular play for a ten-year-old, yet Teel showed no reaction. He was lost in his story.
“At that point, we made a strategic decision. ‘We’? It was really Mulrooney, the one and only boss. I didn’t like the way the case was going so I took a back seat, though I was still in the room.
Mulrooney decided to deal with the hospital directly and not involve the police.
He demanded a huge settlement in hush money.
If Fendamar would pay him the fortune and get rid of Kofie, he would not file a billion-dollar lawsuit, nor would he go to the cops.
The hospital’s lawyers were tough, but so is Mulrooney.
They beat each other up for a few months then reached a settlement.
Pay the fortune, sign a nondisclosure in blood, bury the story, run Kofie out of town, and everybody’s happy.
That was about the time I left the firm. ”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I was disgusted with Mulrooney. He was agreeing to take the money and in return allow a murderer to walk away unpunished. We fought and I remember asking Mulrooney what he would do one day when he heard that Kofie had killed again.”
“And that day is here.”
“It is.”
“What was his response?”
“Nothing much. A shrug that said, ‘So what?’ ”
Simon’s mouth was dry and he sipped some lemonade.
Teel had a dip in his lip and spat on the grass.
“I had two allies in the firm who wanted to stand our ground, file a big suit, and go the distance. We wanted Kofie brought to trial and sent to prison. We wanted to expose Fendamar, though, in all fairness, the hospital is well-thought-of around here. But we were no match for Mulrooney. He just wanted the money.”
“How much?”
“I can’t say because it’s in the NDA.”
“Bullshit. Everything you’ve just told me is covered by the NDA, which you’re not subject to, right?”
“That’s far from certain and it has not been tested. It’s a thick and complicated document that, believe me, nobody on our side wants to litigate. I could get in trouble for talking.”
“You’re obviously not afraid of it.”
“No, I don’t care. I have few assets and have no plans to acquire anything else. Life is simple. I like it this way.”
“Mulrooney’s life is not simple.”
“No, he’s quite complicated. But he’s struggling right now because he knows his own greed has led to more killings. The man’s got a soul, buried deep somewhere.”
“He also got a lot of money.”
“Yes, he did. He got a huge slice of the deal and took his fee offshore, tax-free.”
“How much?”
“Lots of rumors around the firm. No one in the firm knows for sure because Mulrooney routed the money through Singapore and parts unknown, but the best guess is that Fendamar paid around fifty million.”